While I agree with the first two bullet points, however requiring peer validation (and the eventual seo certifications) just won't hit home with people who serve the seo industry or call themselves SEOs. SEO simply cannot be standardized while search engines continue to operate without many guidelines to help a website along in improving its natural rankings.

A person with a solid SEO background don't like to brown nose, nor do they need to, because they should already have established businesses operating on the side that draws in a healthy income. Unless they are in the beginning stages of drumming up new business.

Most SEO's are pretty self sufficient and see the true value of cranking out projects that dominate natural search where they are the business owners after servicing clients for a length of time.